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“Oh, please. Everyone in Jasper Falls knows she’s the prettiest—”
“Hey.” He lifted her chin with his knuckle. “She has nothing on you, Mariella. Bran Dawson’s a tool. He deserved to lose you.”
A soft blush covered the high arch of her cheekbones. “You’re sweet.” She sipped her wine, the motion removing his hold of her face. “What about you? Any marriages or mad love affairs in the past ten years?”
“I had a few close calls with some gold diggers and a two-year relationship with a woman who never knew much more than my phone number.”
“Is that your way of telling me you’re successful?”
“I do all right.”
She glanced at his pants, inspecting the material with a quick brush of her fingertips. His cock twitched.
“How much was your suit?”
“What?”
“Your suit. How much?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
“I really don’t.” He tried not to laugh, but, for some reason, she always made him feel a little lighter, like nothing was really that serious. “My personal shopper picked them up.”
“Oh, my God, you have a personal shopper? Gross.”
“What can I say? I’m bougie.”
“Well, I can’t even afford knockoff labels.”
“I don’t think Jasper Falls is much for designer labels, so I think you might be safe there.”
“You’d be surprised. We’re really moving up in the world. Last month we got our first Uber driver, and we’re on the short list for another cell tower. Pretty soon, we’ll be able to get rid of our land lines like the rest of the world.”
“I stand corrected.” He couldn’t resist the opening. Reaching for her ankle, he lifted the heel of her knee-high leather boot to his lap, tipping her back onto the settee. “And what about these?”
“Those old things? I think I bought them on consignment at the church rummage sale a few years back.”
His hand traced over the leather until his fingers found the warm flesh of her thigh. She sank deeper into the settee, not bothering to stop him. “They look designer.”
She raised a brow as if to say they would never know then asked, “So what happened to the two-year woman who didn’t know more than your phone number?”
“Her time was up. I lost interest and moved on.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Her gaze cut away. “I guess some things never change.”
“Mariella, it wasn’t like that with us.”
She sat up and flattened her skirt over her knees. “No, I’m sure she got a goodbye.”
When she put her glass on the table beside the ice bucket, he caught her hand. “I was young.”
“You were older than me.”
“I was stupid.”
“You were cruel.”
Her words cut through the air like a guillotine and he released her hand. “I never intentionally meant to hurt you. That was the last thing I wanted to do.”
Her lips pressed tight, and he hated the quiver of her chin. If she cried, it would be his penance. He deserved that and worse for ghosting her like he had, but he wished there was a way to make her understand why he needed to go without explaining all the terrible things he’d been trying to escape.
“I’m sorry I hurt you.”
She looked at him, the whites of her eyes no longer as clear. “It still hurts when I think of that little girl lying awake at night wondering what she did wrong.”
“You did nothing wrong. There was nothing you could have done to make me stay.”
She choked out a laugh. “Wow. Is that supposed to make it hurt less?”
“I mean, you didn’t do anything to make me go. It wasn’t about us. It was about me. It was something I just needed to do. And if I would have come to you to say goodbye, you would have asked questions I couldn’t answer. You would have asked me to stay, and I couldn’t. Please believe me when I say I had no other choice.”
“Can you answer my questions now?”
Tension knotted in his shoulders. He thought about his father’s cold body laid out in the county morgue. If the bastard was finally dead, why did his demons seem more alive than ever?
It was this town. He hated this tiny, picture-perfect town where everything appeared fine on the surface but nothing more than bullshit lies rested under the surface.
“No, it’s not meant to make it hurt less. I hurt you, and I’m sorry. Nothing I say now can undo what’s been done.”
She scoffed. “So why say anything at all? I mean, it’s been a decade. Moment’s over, Harrison.”
If it was over, he wouldn’t feel the heat of their lingering chemistry now. “Because I despise knowing my selfish choices caused you a second of pain. If there had been any way to avoid that, I would have, but there wasn’t. Not at the time.”
She was silent for a long moment but then she nodded, accepting his apology. She slid her wine glass closer to the bottle, silently requesting another refill. He topped off both their glasses, emptying the bottle.
